A problem with asteroids

Back in early builds of the game, planet smashing used to send out a shockwave that wiped all units off the face of the planet, while leaving the planet itself mostly intact.

I would rather Asteroids did that, in order to differentiate from the annihilazer. even if it's not possible to slap a lava decal on it or something, have some massive burn mark decal or something.

There was a very fun dynamic in the game back in earlier builds where, in a multiplayer game, a big metal-rich planet would get impacted and wiped, and there would then be a race from everyone to be the first to reclaim a foothold on the newly opened-up world. We don't really have this dynamic in the game atm (without killing a player), and it'd be nice to see it again.

So replace it with something better.

When there was initial discussion about asteroids, some people said that they would add nothing to the game, because we already could smash planets with other planets (or moons). I was a huge fan of the idea of asteroids, and made a few points about how they could actually add to the gameplay, but it all relied on craters working. With the crater system being broken and all smashes simply eliminating planets this is unfortunately true. They don't really add anything to the game (well they look awesome, so that's good)

Since the crater system won't be fixed, here's my proposal.

Keep planet / moon smashing as a complete annihilation of both bodies.
When you smash a planet with an asteroid, the asteroid should be destroyed, the planet should also be destroyed, but have it break up into a new asteroid belt.

That way you end up with another asteroid belt (and they look cool) and a few more areas to fight over.

Well this definitely isn't a bad idea. If Uber could spawn a planet with a similar biome to the planet that was smashed by the asteroid, I think that's the same thing as a crater system, right?

Eg, a desert planet gets smashed by an asteroid, and during the collision event another desert planet could spawn in the massive cloud of debris.

I wonder how we're the only one's to ask ourselves that and even long before said patch ever comes along and in the uber meeting room it seemingly has never come up?

Maybe simply because it's just à first pass.

Well, quote a few (usually newer) players tend to play on maps with 10+ planets... so respawning asteroids could be useful in that context.

Hmm, is it possible to make an asteroid create a shockwave that creates a crater and wipes everything on the planet, but actually makes it disappear, replacing it with a freshly spawned planet that always had that crater all along?

That's such a hacky method but in reality that's pretty much what it would be like, unless the asteroid hits the planet at a bad angle and completely obliterates it.

I think it would be cool for a new "scorched laval planet" to spawn right after an asteroid impact. If they want to create a crater on the new planet though, it might be tough to figure out where to place the crater in terms of programming. And AFAIK, they could use the same-ish system for asteroid spawning to spawn the new planet.

@jables this might be the middle ground for asteroids erasing planets and the crater system

Great... now we will have the generating planet screen in the middle of games . I love the idea though! Wish the biome skin would appear only where the asteroid hit/impact zone. Probably too difficult to include.

I still don't get how the crater system was so hacky and never fully working when "the engine can definitely handle it" (quote from Mavor from three years ago).

Yes I am being passive agressive here. I am massively disappointed in yet another broken promise.
CSG operations are not as performance hungry as people think. I have seen boolean cutout operations four years ago, on two meshes that weighed hundreds of thousands of polygons each, being done in two or three seconds, including UVs and normals. All done in a plugin crammed into a 15 year old DCC software.
If I'd had to bet I'd say its the navmesh and the pathfinding which causes the trouble here...

if I had the option to chainsaw my *** of then sew it to my chest but it was just first pass I probably still wouldn't do it.

introducing asteroids didn't require the backtrack on asteroid mechanics

Im still bummed on current mechanics, and wipeout of planet and crater, or something like that would be soo much better. Make it hacky way, make it not look great at first, but please, make it happen. Gameplay first.

Whatever the alternatives are, I think it's safe to say almost everyone but Uber agrees that asteroids shouldn't destroy planets the same way other planets with halleys on them would.

Story of this game...

Many things that are thought to be possible in early development unfortunately fall through. This is one of them. The crater mechanic is not doable within current performance standards due to redrawing of all pathfinding, navmesh, and how the engine handles terrain deformation/csg's tied to the above two items. We worked on making it happen for multiple months, and unfortunately could not make it work. If we were able to make use of just the best computers, it would be doable, but with min spec being what it is, we can not make it work for the majority of players without massive engine rewrites.

We did what we could in terms of balancing the doable mechanics with gameplay, and have received both negative and positive feedback. The negative are usually the most vocal however, and all we can do is apologize for not living up to your expectations on this element. Our unfortunate alternative is to cut asteroids.. but honestly we feel it brings enough to the game to make them worthwhile in their current form.

Though what was the factor that resulted in the decision of "destroy the planet completely" instead of "make it a planet wide nuke that lets the planet stay intact and only removes all units.
I can't imagine a technical reason for that. What's the main argument against it? I am fine if its a gameplay one really, I am just wondering about that decision.

That's dissapointing. I feel like there are too many same mechanics that do exactly the same.

I feel like whe SHOULD change balance IF we add asteroids. How about we dissallow planet smash, you can only asteroid smash, but you can move planets, so they are in range of Unit Cannon. So you can't send units on long range. But this is a weak idea I guess.

Anyway, we should change something, not allow for asteroids to be the same.

I feel like Uber should do forum official discussion about this topic, be VERY open about this what we CAN do and what we CANT. Please Uber.

This one was due to time constraints and cost. Planet wide effects need technical support to look up to the standards of other effects and we do not currently have the time to make that happen.

2nd Kickstarter? I'm in

Then will you simply consider making them just really big explosions? It's almost unanimous; we prefer gameplay over effects. Don't make it a planet-wide effect. Bases are mostly not planet wide. A really large explosion, similar to a nuke but much larger, will make it worthwhile. After all, a single Halley is cheaper than a nuclear missile and its silo, it cannot be countered as cheaply as Anti-Nuke, and this is balanced in return by how you need to go to the asteroid.

It's so simple!

Asteroid:

1. Large, disposable weapon that will probably annihilate a base anyway
2. There's no sacrifice, it's a highly efficient weapon but also an in-map objective
3. The cheapest, but is also a contested area

Planet:

1. Giant sacrifice, but your enemy won't have a planet anymore either
2. A dramatic game ender, and sometimes a desperate move
3. More expensive than Asteroid and has lasting effects for the user but is also far more potent

Annihilaser:

1. Longest and hardest setup with the most specific conditions
2. Almost unstoppable

Nuke:

1. Can be built everywhere and is flexible with its uses
2. Shaves off surplus resources at late game and is a good substitute to spamming even more units

See! This way, all four superweapons in the game have a reason to be used, they can actually coexist with eachother (asteroid instakills will ring out both planet smashing and annihilaser, ask anyone), and they're actually all balanced in their own way!

Now I don't actually believe I can change anyone's mind here, but if by some miracle you and (if applicable) anyone else in the decision making process are willing to hear me out I strongly urge you to double, triple, quadruple, quintuple think before you do this power creeping change. Asteroids can matter a lot without killing other present mechanics, and it's simple to do. I think I speak for many of us that we'd rather have this setup even with the lack of pretty craters, and we completely understand that there may not be resources to have the said craters.

Please.